The present invention relates generally to the field of rolled products and more particularly to the field of retarding dispensing of rolled products such as toilet paper, paper towels, and the like.
Rolled products are considered well-known. Many products are commercially available as product rolls, including toilet paper, paper towels, tissue paper, plastic film, metal foil, waxed paper, wrapping paper, etc. A product roll typically includes a cylindrical core having a core inner surface which defines a central passageway and a core outer surface around which the product is coaxially wound.
Rolled product dispensers are also considered well-known. A dispenser typically includes a stationary base with two base arms and a telescopic dispenser spindle removably supported by the base arms. Ordinarily, a product roll is mounted onto a dispenser spindle by first removing the dispenser spindle from the base arms, inserting the dispenser spindle through the central passageway of the cylindrical core of the product roll, and remounting the combination dispenser spindle and product roll onto the dispenser base.
After the product roll is mounted onto the dispenser, it may be dispensed through pulling the free end of the product to cause the product roll to unwind. Since a dispenser spindle frequently has a much smaller diameter than a cylindrical core of a product roll, the product roll tends to loosely rotate around the dispenser spindle as the product unwinds. After a user unwinds a desired amount of product, the user typically jerks the free end of the product to tear the product at a desired location. Such tearing is often facilitated by perforations in the product itself.
One problem related to the dispensing of product rolls arises from their tendency to unwind too much. As a user attempts to tear a rolled product, and often as a product is initially unwound, the product roll fails to tear and/or tends to continue unwinding past a desirable location. As is often the case with toilet paper, the toilet paper unwinds to a point where it covers a portion of the floor. Even if the floor is considered sanitary and the user wishes to rewind the toilet paper onto the roll, most attempts at manually rewinding toilet paper rolls produce unsightly results.
Problems related to the copious unwinding of product rolls are considered well-known. Many efforts have been made to restrain undesirable unwinding of rolled products. Several of the previous efforts are disclosed in the following U.S. patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,770,221, 3,850,379, 4,285,474, and 4,610,407. Many of the previous efforts have involved alternately designed dispensers which appear to be expensive, complicated, and fail to make use of the large number and variety of currently installed dispensers. Others tend to restrict unwinding to such a great degree that users often unintentionally tear the product during normal unwinding.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for a method and apparatus for solving these and other related, and unrelated, problems.